Examining gains and pains of a new virtual internship design

This study investigated how student effort and the course design influenced an online internship in China. A cohort of 95 postgraduate students became distance learners in a credit-bearing internship course due to COVID-19. The course leader applied the action learning framework to prompt student online collaboration and group inquiry. The framework assumes the importance of self-reliant learner autonomy in virtual internships. After the course, researchers analyzed the effects of self-directed learning with technology on a multidimensional community of inquiry in a virtual environment. The study also identified students' narratives that explain how self-directed learning with technology interacted with three elements of virtual communities of inquiry: social, cognitive, and teaching. Findings explain how virtual internships can be facilitated through a community of inquiry model. Educators and practitioners may consider the model to demonstrate student-staff partnerships (Fitzgerald et al., 2020) to achieve quality transformation of internships from face-to-face mode to distance education. © 2023 Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, Inc.

Exploring spaces in-between: Reimagining the Chinese student in a transnational higher education context in China

This chapter explores how one group of Chinese undergraduate students in a transnational university in China see themselves as HE students and as Chinese youth in a changing political and social landscape, where transnational education is rapidly changing. This chapter is informed by empirical evidence from 31 semi-structured interviews, using an arts-based interview method, with Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) as the case study. The study is grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis, whereby discursive constructions of students’ identities are analysed and theorised in relation to the articulation between material realities, the students’ personal and cultural values, and their embodied self and agency, with a focus on liminality (in-between spaces) as part of identity constructions and culture negotiation. In the process, a range of potential conflicting forces, for example those related to culture, educational backgrounds and nationality, which are part of students’ identity constructions, were identified. This ongoing process of identity construction may have a profound impact on how these students see themselves and their place in the world into the future, and by extension on the way China as a nation will reimagine itself in its engagement with the rest of the world, in particular in a post-COVID-19 world. © 2021 selection and editorial matter, Rachel Brooks and Sarah O’Shea.